As Diana Vreeland (1903-1989), chief editor of American Vogue, stated in her introduction to that May 1986 Sotheby's catalogue : 

" Mona Bismarck was an extraordinary beauty who all her life surrounded herself  with gaiety, vitality and mirth. She lived among objects of perfection in her superb house. But perhaps her most lovely surroundings were her endless mediterranean gardens. I remember them as acres of bewilderment, riots of colour which in the evening would produce that intense smell of night-blooming jasmin or the warm scent of roses left behind by the sunshine

Mona Bismarck loved her gardens, and she adored her outdoor life, especially tennis and swimming. Sometimes she would disappear into the sea for hours; swimming, floating, totally absorbed in the glory of the sky, the sun... Her eyes amazing in their size and shape and of an extreme blue which when falling on you would absorb you into her wonderful vivacity and beauty

In a rather miraculous way, everything that was hers was out of the ordinary. By day, I never saw her without her enormous pearls gleaming on her immaculate skin. By night her superb jewels, sometimes a magnificent diamond necklace, sometimes a chain of emeralds or her parure of rubies, would be a backdrop to her unforgettable elegance.

She lived a life which would be difficult for anyone to repeat today, but her ageless jewels survive to adorn other beauties in other settings".